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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 8:58:56 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 41m A worldwide draft is one of the remaining issues in MLB/players talks that resume today. MLB wants one, union and many agents would prefer not. (Though, a few agents are concerned talented foreign kids r taken advantage of and wonder whether a world draft may reduce problem.)
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 9:00:49 GMT -5
Bob Nightengale @bnightengale · 1m Lockout Day No. 98: The Players Association is scheduled to meet soon this morning with its executive board before providing a written response to MLB's proposal. MLB wants an agreement by this afternoon or would likely cancel another week of regular-season games.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 9:08:55 GMT -5
Héctor Gómez @hgomez27 · 59m Fernando Tatis Jr.: "The International Draft is going to kill baseball in DR. It's going to affect us a lot, because there will be many young people who used to give them the opportunity to get a bonus and with the draft it will not be the same ”, per @elcariberd. pic.twitter.com/KpUm6KEazb
Lou Merloni @loumerloni · 4m The International draft is not a small thing. Tatis isn’t the only one saying this. If I was a big market team that has spent time and $$ on scouting Latin countries, I don’t think I’d be happy. I would lose the advantage I once had. Still not enough to not get a deal done IMO
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 14:32:44 GMT -5
Apple, NBC Agree To Streaming Deals With Major League Baseball
By Steve Adams | March 9, 2022 at 9:05am CDT
March 9: In addition to their deal with Apple, MLB has also finalized a streaming rights deal with NBC Sports, reports Mike Ozanin of Forbes. NBC will purchase the rights to the Monday Night Baseball and Wednesday Night Baseball packages that ESPN did not include in its new deal with MLB. Those games will “mainly” be streamed on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, though specific broadcast details have not yet been announced by MLB or by NBC.
The pair of new streaming deals will pay MLB $115MM annually, Ozanin further reports. MLB’s deal with Apple is a seven-year contract that comes out to $85MM annually. The NBC/Peacock deal is shorter, clocking in at two years and $30MM in annual rights fees. It’s not yet expressly clear that the NBC deal will make those games exclusive to Peacock, but assuming that’s the case (as it is with Apple), the league would be subtracting somewhere around 100 total games (perhaps a bit more) from its MLB.tv package with this pair of new streaming deals.
Under MLB’s previous deals with ESPN, FOX and TBS, the league pulled in an average of $1.55 billion in annual television rights between the regular season and the playoffs. Their newest batch of contracts with those providers, plus the recent additions of Apple and NBC, give MLB a 26% increase in television and streaming revenue — up to an average of $1.96 billion each year, according to Ozanin. That comes out to about $65MM per club, before factoring in each team’s local/regional broadcast contracts.
March 8: Major League Baseball and Apple announced Tuesday that they have agreed to a streaming deal that will see two Friday night games streamed exclusively on Apple TV+ each week, beginning with the 2022 season. “Friday Night Baseball” will feature live pregame and postgame shows and will be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Apple TV+ will also offer a program called “MLB Big Inning” to U.S. viewers, which the press release describes as a “live show featuring highlights and look-ins airing every weeknight during the regular season.”
The new service will allow fans to watch “marquee” games each Friday which will be “free from local broadcast restrictions.” Fans who are frustrated by the blackout issues that have served as a persistent source of consternation for MLB.tv users will surely welcome an alternative — particularly those who are already subscribe to Apple TV+.
However, the Friday Night Baseball deal now removes two games per week from that same MLB.tv package, given that today’s press release from Apple emphasizes the exclusivity of those Friday night broadcasts. That’s sure to raise the ire of MLB.tv users who do not have an active Apple TV+ subscription, as they’ll now be required to sign up for an additional monthly service if they wish to catch those Friday night contests. Today’s press release indicates that “for a limited time,” Friday Night Baseball will be accessible without a subscription but offers no further detail.
Of course, it’s only natural to see Major League Baseball continue to push into the streaming space, as they’ve done in recent years with live-game broadcasts on YouTube and Facebook. Other such deals will surely follow, particularly given how prominent this model is becoming throughout all of professional sports. Amazon Prime began streaming Thursday Night Football games in recent years, for instance, while other services like Peacock, Hulu and Paramount+ have increasingly begun to offer exclusive live sports streams as part of their models. There’s considerable profit to be gained by expanding streaming partnerships in this fashion, even if it comes at the expense of MLB watering down its longstanding MLB.tv offerings.
“Apple is the ideal partner to bring ‘Friday Night Baseball’ to fans around the world,” MLB chief revenue officer Noah Garden said in a statement within today’s press release. “Following milestones like the launch of At Bat on day one of the App Store in 2008 to the integration of Apple technology in ballparks across the country, this robust new game package is the perfect next collaboration in our long history of offering quality and innovative content to our fans. With national availability and international reach, MLB on Apple TV+ offers an exciting new platform to fans that allows a wider audience to connect with the game.”
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 14:34:35 GMT -5
Latest On Potential International Draft
By Steve Adams | March 9, 2022 at 11:50am CDT
11:50am: Newsday’s Tim Healey tweets that under MLB’s proposal, the international draft would not go into effect until 2024. That’s surely vital for Latin American players, as some prominent figures have stressed that if implemented, the finer details should not be rushed.
Among those prominent voices is Red Sox icon David Ortiz, who spoke passionately in a message to his countrymen from the Dominican Republic today (Twitter thread via ESPN’s Jeff Passan). Ortiz stressed the importance of the league and players working together to get the specifics of the draft right. Ortiz adds:
“Baseball is such a big thing in the Dominican. Baseball keeps kids off the streets. We don’t want that to walk away from us. We want it to get better. That’s my focus. Nothing else. We have the youth. People wanting to be me, Pedro, Pujols. We can’t let that go away. At the end of the day, I don’t want those kids to be affected by it. I already played baseball. I had a career. I care about the kids being treated right. I understand MLB wants to have control over everything they do, but you’re not going to change the system overnight. Baseball is one of the secret weapons of the Dominican economy. If you talk about a draft here in the states, you have choices. You can do football, basketball. … Dominican has baseball to make your way out. That’s it. You have to be careful.”
11:00am: The potential implementation of an international draft has become a focal point in collective bargaining between MLB and the Players Association as gaps elsewhere in negotiations begin to close. Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith reported last night that the international draft is one of the largest remaining obstacles in talks. The league, reportedly, is seeking to trade an elimination of the qualifying offer system for the draft — a concept they’d already proposed in prior packages. Of course, everything in these package proposals is dependent on other factors, so the league now using the QO elimination as a “give” in exchange for the international draft likely just reflects the manner in which other elements of the proposals have ebbed and flowed.
In some new developments on the topic of the proposed international draft, Maria Torres and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic report this morning that MLB’s latest proposal included a slot value of $5.5MM for the No. 1 overall pick (Twitter thread). That’s up slightly from the league’s weekend proposal, wherein MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince reported that MLB was positing a potential $5.25MM slot value for the first pick of a 20-round draft. Slots would also be hard-capped, per Castrovince, as opposed to the soft-capping and “recommended” slot values in the domestic draft. The newly proposed $5.5MM top overall slot value is still miles shy of the $8.415MM first overall slot value from this past summer’s domestic amateur draft; today’s $250K bump narrowly pushes the top international slot’s value past the No. 7 overall slot value from the 2021 amateur draft.
Major League Baseball’s pitch to the union is that the proposed slot values could generate as much as $23MM in additional spending on international amateurs in a given year, per Torres. She adds that the final 100 slots in the draft would be valued at a combined $3.3MM, whereas MLB has pointed out to the union that the bottom 100 bonuses in the past couple of signing periods have averaged about $1.78MM in total. Notably, that particular spin ignores that the “bottom 100 bonuses” in prior signing periods is not necessarily equivalent to the “bottom 100 slots” in an international draft where only a finite number of players (600) can be selected. Torres notes that undrafted international amateurs could still sign, but Rosenthal tweets that bonuses would be capped at $20K.
Regardless of specific permutations on the late rounds and undrafted amateurs, there’s still some considerable pushback against the concept from the players’ end of things — particularly among Latin American big leaguers. Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. has publicly pushed back, telling El Caribe (Twitter link):
“The International Draft is going to kill baseball in [Dominican Republic]. It’s going to affect us a lot, because there will be many young people who used to give them the opportunity to get a bonus and with the draft it will not be the same.”
ESPN’s Marly Rivera reports that many Latin American players share those concerns, adding that the general sentiment among Puerto Rican players is that their entry into the amateur draft has stunted the development of baseball on the whole. Astros catcher Martin Maldonado, originally drafted by the Angels out of Dr. Juan J. Nunez high school in Puerto Rico, tweeted this morning that he “agrees 100%” with the concerns raised by Tatis.
As Rivera further notes, MLB’s position on the international draft is that it will help to regulate some of the many improprieties that currently exist on the international market. It’s a poorly kept secret that verbal agreements between Major League teams and international amateurs are in place years before those players are eligible to sign on their 16th birthdays; Major League scouts are regularly evaluating players before they even reach their teenage years, and players can have verbal agreements with teams as early as 13 or 14 years of age. Additional concerns include steroid usage among baseball hopefuls during those critical formative years, as well as exploitative behavior from many “buscones” who arrange deals between teams and amateur players.
The pushback from the union, presumably, is that these improprieties can be corrected without the implementation of an amateur draft. Major League Baseball has rules and regulations in place that are intended to bar early agreements of this nature. However, with the exception of former Braves GM John Coppolella being banned for circumventing those rules, punishments have been few and far between. Even after Coppolella’s ouster, early deals have continued. As Mike Axisa of CBS Sports explored recently, MLB could crack down on corruption on the international market by simply choosing to enforce its own typically ignored rules and regulations.
All that said, the draft system does figure to have some benefits for international amateurs. MLB’s current system is hard-capped, and while the draft wouldn’t change that, the simple fact that the combined value of the draft slots being proposed exceeds the combined value of the current international bonus pools means more money will go to those amateurs. Further, even though the league could likely cut down on corruption without implementing the draft, that does not change the fact that the draft ought to nevertheless curtail those early agreements. (Other forms of corruption, of course, will be more difficult to suppress.)
For the players, concerns surely remain about the potential stunting of baseball’s growth in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia and other markets. It’s also a clear negative for a player not to be able to choose his first team and to not be able to negotiate more openly. The draft could potentially lead to fewer high-dollar deals for the market’s very best prospects — depending on the exact distribution of slot values.
Ultimately, given the manner in which the two sides have begun to move closer to an agreement on other elements of the deal, it seems hard to imagine the finer points of an international draft truly scuttling a deal. It’s clear there’s still work to be done, though, and much of it will center around this topic.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 14:43:23 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 1h Things are moving slow so far today in MLB/player talks. Hope was to try to wrap things up late this afternoon but tonight may still be in play. If a deal does get done today, they would play the full 162 with the 6 games made up on off days and by extending season a few days.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 14:47:51 GMT -5
Michael Silverman @mikesilvermanbb · 47m MLBPA squad just left MLB headquarters, their latest proposal now in MLB hands.
This could go a few ways 1) League & owners love every last detail of players’ counter-offer, rush to sign it & it’s ovah. (Ha) 2) They like it OK, don’t love it, spend next 6 hours tweaking & finding 23 owners to agree on next proposal. 3) They object, strongly: Games lost. 4) ?
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 14:53:00 GMT -5
MLB international draft: Red Sox legend David Ortiz strongly opposed to proposal, but league insists it’ll bring more money to players Updated: Mar. 09, 2022, 1:55 p.m. | Published: Mar. 09, 2022, 1:55 p.m.
By Chris Cotillo | ccotillo@MassLive.com
NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball has found a loud, opposing voice as it has tried to work an international draft into its next collective bargaining agreement: Red Sox legend David Ortiz.
Ortiz recorded a voice message strongly opposing the implementation of the draft and it was shared widely in Dominican baseball circles, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. In an interview with Passan, Ortiz said he was not “fundamentally opposed” to the idea but cautioned that a quick implementation would be bad for baseball in the Dominican Republic.
“The system in the Dominican is not ready to have a draft next year,” Ortiz said as part of a lengthy conversation with Passan. “The Dominican is not the U.S. You can’t snap a finger and everything lines up to operate the right way. We’ve got a new president who’s trying to improve things. We need to do this slowly.”
Currently, international amateurs (everyone outside of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico) join MLB teams through a free agent signing process in which teams are capped on how much they spend. That system, while producing some of the best players in recent baseball history, is also ripe with corruption and other issues, such as steroid use among teenagers. As part of the ongoing labor negotiations with the players’ union, MLB recently introduced the international draft while making concessions on other issues. It appears the players are divided about whether or not to accept it.
On Wednesday, MLB officials said they hope to implement the international draft in 2024 and not 2023, as they had previously hoped. The league’s theory behind the draft is that it will cure systemic issues with international players by limiting early deals that involve kick-backs to trainers and agents; the benefit, according to the officials, will be that the same number of international amateurs join the pro ranks every year and more money is injected into the process than in previous years.
The draft would include 20 rounds and roughly 615 picks (including competitive balance selections) that all come with hard slot values that serve as guaranteed signing bonuses. There would be no limit on how many undrafted players sign; the league expects $17-23 million in additional spending on international players if the draft is instituted.
The unique part of the proposal, according to the officials, is a rotating draft order in which clubs would be randomly assigned to a group that cycles through draft positions every year. This would ensure that every team drafts in the top seven or eight picks every year and that over the course of time, every team picks in every slot.
While MLB feels its plan is much better than international drafts it has proposed in the past, it’s still unclear whether the players will accept. As of Wednesday morning, the union is caucusing with its representatives, discussing the various aspects of MLB’s latest proposal. The league believes that the skepticism from parties like Ortiz comes from a historic belief that any international draft would be a cost-cutting measure. The league, which met with former players, trainers, government officials and others before finalizing its plan, insists that the draft would bring more money to international players.
With the sides facing yet another deadline in order to play a full season, it’s clear the international draft is at the forefront of negotiations. There are loud voices on both sides of the argument. Ortiz is among them.
“Baseball is one of the secret weapons of the Dominican economy,” he told Passan. “If you talk about a draft here in the states, you have choices. You can do football, basketball. You don’t have choices. Dominican has baseball to make your way out. That’s it. You have to be careful.”
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 15:26:48 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 23m Hearing big gaps still exist following the union counteroffer. Discouraging news for those hoping for deal today. Resistance is strong to international draft. @ken_Rosenthal mentioned multiple other differences.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 15:28:08 GMT -5
Ken Rosenthal @ken_Rosenthal · 30m International draft “non-starter” for Latin players and might not be acceptable to union even with major MLB give, sources tell @theathletic . Union in latest proposal still wants qualifying offer eliminated, as well as higher CBT thresholds and pre-arb pool than MLB has offered.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 15:56:37 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 16m Almost no progress made today on another deadline day. Union moved slightly on CBT (now $12M apart in year 5) and bonus pool (still far apart) but they r not close. MLB may make another counter offer today but hard to see deal getting done today. Cancellation of more games looms.
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Post by Kimmi on Mar 9, 2022 16:20:02 GMT -5
Stop. I have tended to understand the owners' side of things more than the players, but this is straight up BS. and that clown represents the owners maybe now u will see why i despise the owners I don't despise the owners. I think they need to concede some more, as do the players.
But don't try to tell me that the fans are their top priority.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 17:42:59 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 1h The rhetoric is very bad now. Pessimism reigns. But at least they r closer on $. ($2M difference in 2022 CBT, $8M in ‘26 CBT, $30M bonus pool). Clear union won’t do international draft so MLB could try to either substitute something else or reinstate the qualifying offer?
MLB people say the Union is the one that in Jupiter originally offered the exact tradeoff MLB just offered of the implementing of an international draft for the elimination of the CBT. Meanwhile, Union says that’s not true, that it rejected an international draft multiple times.
MLB has given players 3 options. Accept international draft with no draft pick compensation, no draft but continue compensation, or sign CBA including eliminating draft pick compensation and examine international draft. If union does implement in 2 years, league can re-open CBA.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 17:45:24 GMT -5
Ken Rosenthal @ken_Rosenthal · 28m Per union source, MLB told PA it would counter on all issues today, but now league is saying it will do that only if union agrees to one of three options regarding int’l draft. League source disputes that account.
Evan Drellich @evandrellich · 14m Re: option MLB proposed that would include potentially reopening CBA if the int’l draft isn’t agreed to. The deadline for players would be Nov. 15, 2022, MLB official said. If at that point players didn’t want the draft (which would begin in ’24), MLB could reopen CBA after ’24.
That means, in effect, the CBA would become a three-year deal, rather than a standard five-year deal. It would be the ability for MLB to reopen the entire deal, not just a particular subject.
An MLB official said the league has included the international draft in every relevant proposal. A union official says the international draft has been rejected every time it has been raised.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Mar 9, 2022 20:18:35 GMT -5
Jon Heyman @jonheyman · 2h Folks on both sides are saying the other side doesn’t want to do a deal. I think those folks are wrong. The one obvious thing is that missed games would be devastating for the sport. They all have to know that much!
Players have seemed very much together from the start. And now owners for the first time seem galvanized. This misunderstanding (or more) over who introduced the international draft into the process and what was said in Jupiter has at least for the moment poisoned the well.
MLB just announced games are cancelled through April 13. Another sad day in the game.
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